INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY. VII. PART III. GENERAL STRUCTURE OF SOCIETIES.
CHAPTER VI. Continued.
SECTION III. ADAPTATION AND ACCLIMATIZATION OF THE HUMAN SPECIES.
THE continued adaptation of all living species to the particular conditions of existence to which they are subjected, or to which they seek to subject themselves in order to obtain an advantage, is a general static law, which is common to all of them, includ- ing the human species. This law is the application of the still more general law of equilibration of the relations of structure and of the limitations of the forms of inorganic nature. It is therefore connected with the most universal laws of movement.
Organized beings adapt themselves to the environment only to a degree strictly necessary in order that they may live, and no more. The organs which become useless to life are elimi- nated, while those which are favorable to the preservation and the continuity of life are perfected, all thanks to selection, repe- tition, and heredity. If these metamorphoses are not accom- plished, life diminishes and even ceases entirely. Among animals in general this continued adaptation to the conditions of life, and to all of the movements of time and to all of the points of space, this constant equilibration is most often passive, imposed by the external environment. Among men they furthermore become active, and more and more so with the progress of knowledge. The amelioration of the species and of its conditions of existence by the species itself comes to be added to the pure instinct of preservation. Man adapts himself to more and more special environments, certainly not in virtue of an absolutely free will, but conformably to material and new needs for which he has the foresight, and even in virtue of an ideal whose influence is imposed upon him with a force sometimes as irresistible as that created by the purely inorganic nature upon inferior beings. In a word, the human species adapts itself, not only through natural
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